Let me add my support to DNT and let me also declare an interest, as I am a KWCA committee member, a trustee of Wild Spaces Fund and company secretary of East Coast Sporting Ltd. I am also a solicitor so don't get legal with me unless you really know your stuff.
There are no behing the scenes dealings, insider trading or anything like that between KWCA and BASC. See also Alan Jarrett's post above. To use a common phrase -"end of"!
KWCA membership is open to all genuine fowlers and you don't have to live in Kent. We aren't a closed shop unlike some, as access to our membership isn't a matter of having to know someone already in the club or living locally or waiting to fill dead mens shoes and all our members have equal access to all of our shooting grounds.
Wild Spaces Fund has always been associated with KWCA since KWCA set it up as their conservation arm. A few years ago, we turned it into a registered charity and it now operates at arm's length from KWCA with independent trustees handling anything where KWCA is the other party. Its objects are conservation but of course friendly to wildfowling and we conservation manage 6 reserves in Kent which are owned by KWCA. We also intend to carry out relevant conservation activities at Brancaster, though as it is common land, those activities obviously can't be of the same nature/intensity as the 6 reserves which are exclusive to us. WSF has its own website and Facebook page.
East Coast Sporting Ltd is in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of KWCA - as KWCA is a club and thus not a legal person in its own right it can't be a member of ECS itself, so there are nominee shareholders for the KWCA.
In answer to Anser2, I've donated to various fundraising activities of BASC in recent years for the benefit of wildfowling across the country and I've also donated money of my own to Wild Spaces Fund and GWCT, as well as various angling bodies for conservation activities.
KWCA intends to exercise the shooting rights associated with the rights of WSF and ECS consistent with what an individual holder would do, so you aren't going to be flooded with KWCA members shooting there.
With regard to the commons, I've now seen loads of applications to transfer rights or shares in rights via official notifications from Norfolk County Council and I guess others of you who are also common rights holders will have seen them too. There seems to be a flourishing activity in transferring and recently one of those I saw involved a transfer from a rights holder giving an address in Australia. If you have any legitimate complaint about us in Kent acquiring rights (and I don't think you can have any beyond sour grapes), you should be going nuclear about someone in Australia having rights there! Would you rather the rights that are put on the market are bought by true wildfowlers, or would you rather have a bunch of rich City boys or even the RSPB as co-owners?
